The State of Traditional TV: Updated With Q1 2017 Data

[By MC Editor, JC Lupis] Here we go again! The latest quarterly TV viewing figures have been issued by Nielsen, giving us 25 consecutive quarters of Americans’ traditional TV viewing habits to examine. If you’ve been keeping track of these quarterly updates, you know by now that youth as a whole are watching less traditional TV. Is anything new in this latest study [download page], covering Q1 2017? Let’s take a look.

Before getting to the data and trends, a quick note on methodology. The below data in large part concerns “traditional TV” viewing, which averages out all live and DVR/time-shifted TV viewing (such as video-on-demand) during each quarter. As such, it is a measure of legacy TV viewing on set-top boxes, and does not include viewing via connected TV devices. While time-shifted TV viewing is growing, it still represents only a fraction of total “traditional TV” viewing. For example, among the total 18-24 population, weekly live TV viewing averaged 13 hours and 2 minutes per week in Q1 2017, while DVR and time-shifted TV viewing averaged 1 hour and 29 minutes per week.

Research from another recent Nielsen study (the Comparable Metrics Report) that looks at audience sizes and consumption across various media channels;

Income and race/ethnicity data outlined in recent Nielsen studies; and

Results from other sources that compare linear and streaming TV viewing.

Now, on to the data…

Nielsen’s most recent “Total Audience Report” indicates that Americans aged 18-24 watched a weekly average of 14-and-a-half hours of traditional TV during Q1 2017. What does that mean?

It’s a little over 2 hours per day of traditional TV for this young group.

In terms of a year-over-year change, Q1’s figure represents a decline of 1 hour and 47 minutes per week. In other words, 18-24-year-olds as a group went from watching about 2 hours and 19 minutes per day during the first quarter of 2016 to about 2 hours and 4 minutes per day during the first quarter of this year.

The year-over-year decline in traditional TV viewing among the 18-24 population was the largest since Q3 2015, narrowly edging declines seen in Q1 2016 and Q4 2015.

In sum, between 2011 and 2017, first quarter traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds dropped by almost 12 hours a week, or by roughly 1 hour and 40 minutes per day.

In percentage terms, Q4 traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds was down by 10.9% year-over-year and has now fallen by 41.3% since 2012.

In other words, in the space of 5 years, more than 40% of this age group’s traditional TV viewing time has migrated to other activities or streaming (more on that to come).

The interactive chart below offers a visual presentation of traditional TV consumption figures for each age bracket, showing how this type of TV viewing is trending down (sloping to the left) for younger demos, while slightly increasing (sloping to the right) for the oldest group.

A couple of notes regarding the chart: a vertical line chart is used there because it better portrays the varying trends among age groups than a typical horizontal line chart. Also, the trends are exaggerated by making the horizontal axis range 10-55 hours per week rather than 0-55 hours per week.

A couple of notes regarding the chart: a vertical line chart is used there because it better portrays the varying trends among age groups than a typical horizontal line chart. Also, the trends are exaggerated by making the horizontal axis range 10-55 hours per week rather than 0-55 hours per week.

Here’s what the data looks like as a horizontal line chart with no vertical axis limits applied:

The above figures are averaged among the entire population, meaning that they include those Americans who don’t watch traditional TV. That number is more prevalent among youth: Nielsen’s recent “Comparable Metrics” report indicates, for example, that in Q4 2016, TV’s weekly reach was just 79% among 18-34-year-olds, well below the 89% average for all adults.

Interestingly, the drop-off in viewing among 18-24-year-olds is larger when looking just at persons in TV households (TV viewers). Among 18-24-year-old viewers, the Q1 2017 average of 72 hours and 17 minutes per month was down from 82 hours and 16 minutes per month during Q1 2016, representing a drop of about 10 hours per month.

That puts the per-day decline among 18-24-year-old viewers at about 20 minutes, larger than the viewing drop among the 18-24 population overall (about 15 minutes per day). This indicates that viewing losses are not the result just of cord-cutting or a growing cord-never population: 18-24-year-old viewers are also watching less traditional TV.

What About Other Age Groups? (Updated Data)

Of course, there are other age groups of interest when analyzing traditional TV viewing, including teens (a potential leading indicator) and older Millennials (aged 25-34), who might be more apt to watch traditional TV as they round into life stages such as parenthood and home ownership. (More on that coming.)

Looking at the latest Total Audience Report, the data indicates that:

Teens (12-17) watched 13 hours and 02 minutes of traditional TV per week in Q1, a substantial 15.9% drop year-over-year (much larger than in Q4 2016) and a 41.4% contraction over the past 5 years;

Older Millennials (25-34) watched 21 hours and 13 minutes per week in Q1, an 11.2% decrease year-over-year that was more than double Q4’s drop (5.2%) along with a considerable 28.7% drop over 5 years;

Gen Xers (35-49) watched 30 hours and 34 minutes per week, a 4.8% decline that figured as 3 times larger than Q4’s drop (1.6%), and representing a 13% contraction over a 5-year period;

Adults aged 50-64 watched 43 hours and 29 minutes per week, down 1.4% year-over-year (weaker than in Q4), but relatively flat (+0.6%) over 5 years; and

Adults aged 65 and older watched 51 hours and 42 minutes per week, up by 0.3% from the previous year (weaker than in Q4) and up by 7.7% over 5 years.

Of note is that TV viewing trends were weaker in Q1 2017 than in Q4 2016 for all of these age groups.

Also, let’s stand back for a moment and re-iterate 3 of the above findings:

Both teens and young Millennials have seen their traditional TV viewing evaporate by more than 40% over the past 5 years;

Teens’ traditional TV viewing fell by almost one-sixth in a single year; and

Even older Millennials are getting in the act, with more than one-quarter of their traditional TV viewing gone over the space of 5 years.

If you’re looking for one chart that says it all (the TL:DR version), here it is:

Those results demonstrate the age-related skew in traditional TV viewing, with declines easing off with each age bracket and turning into viewing increases among the oldest age groups. To wit, the 65+ group has only recorded two quarters (in Q4 2014 and Q1 2015) of declines in traditional TV viewing over the past 25 quarters of analysis.

Looking at the overall picture, live TV consumption by adults averaged 4 hours and 21 minutes per day in Q1, down 10 minutes per day from Q1 2016 after dropping by 3 minutes per day between 2016 and 2015. Clearly, the declines accelerated this past quarter.

How Does Traditional TV Measure Up With Streaming Video? (Updated Data)

So yes, 18-24-year-olds are continuing to watch less traditional TV with each passing quarter, likely due in part to increasing consumption of digital video and more time spent with their smartphones.

It’s worth remembering that Q1 2016 marked the first time that streaming video services were in 50% of US TV households. That was up 8% points from just a year earlier. By contrast, DVR penetration had remained flat at 49-50% for the prior 6 quarters. (More adults in TV households now have access to Netflix than to DVRs, another milestone.)

Keep in mind that Netflix now has more paying subscribers in the US than all of the top cable TV companies, combined, as we exclusively reported earlier this year.

What does Nielsen data have to say about streaming versus traditional TV? According to the data presented by Nielsen, traditional TV is still the single largest video consumption source. It’s also clear that measurement concerns persist, as its Comparable Metrics report notes the various video metrics included and not included in consumption counts. For example, smartphone and tablet video figures do not include content available through applications and the web where video is not the primary focus, such as Facebook. Even so, the methodology does include apps and sites where one might expect most long-form video consumption, such as Netflix and HBO GO… It’s worth keeping those disclosures in mind when looking at the following chart.

Note that the above chart measures video consumption among users of each medium; those 18-34-year-olds who don’t watch video on their smartphones are not diluting the average. Were one to average these figures out among the total population (bearing in mind that this would dilute viewing time for digital devices such as tablets to a greater extent than traditional TV), the gap would be greater.

The online-offline comparison is obviously up for debate as Nielsen itself is in the thick of a vibrant discussion about total audience measurement, and that’s why the prevailing focus of this article is on trends within a single viewing source (traditional TV). Nevertheless, the above data offers some insights as to why the industry is abuzz over digital video and not traditional TV.

(Note that these aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons, as they measure different base samples and viewing frequencies. They’re nonetheless illustrative of the demographic gap between TV audiences.)

Whether or not one agrees that Millennials are a more valuable demographic than, say, Baby Boomers (these financial stats might suggest otherwise), the online TV viewing audience is probably the choice for most marketers today, if all of the hullabaloo about Millennials is to be trusted.

(See the MarketingCharts report on media audience demographics for more data about the audience composition – age, household income and race/ethnicity – of broadcast, cable TV, and online video viewers, along with audience data for about a dozen other major online and offline media.)

Due to methodological changes that Nielsen has put into place for its latest Comparable Metrics report, we can’t report on year-over-year trends. But it is worth noting the increasing prevalence of TV-connected devices. (Their growth has been documented recently here and here.)

In Q4 2016, TV viewers in the 18-34 bracket watched TV on average during just 4.7 days per week, about one day less than the 5.6 average among all adults. But 18-34-year-old users of TV-connected devices spent an average of 4.1 days per week with them, above the adult average of 3.6 days per week.

In this case, TV-connected devices refers to DVDs, game consoles, multimedia devices and VCRs (and includes time spent playing games on game consoles), so it’s difficult to ascertain to what extent this relates to streaming video via multimedia devices. Still, the latest Total Audience Report indicates that 18-34-year-olds spend about as much time with multimedia devices as they do with gaming consoles, suggesting that a large portion of the more than 11 hours per week that 18-34-year-old users spend with TV-connected devices is spent watching video.

The following are some other takeaways from the Comparable Metrics report specific to the 18-34 bracket:

Radio maintained the broadest reach of any platform (92.3%) among 18-34-year-olds during the average week in the Q4 period, while the smartphone (app + web) audience was considerably larger than the TV audience (91% vs. 78.8%);

Weekly reach was higher for smartphone video (62.9%) than for PC video (26.3%) and tablet video (17.8%) for this demographic; although

Time spent by the total 18-34-year-old population was higher for PC video (172 minutes per week on average) than for smartphone video (73 minutes) and tablet video (28 minutes);

Among 18-34-year-old users of these various media, PC video (654 minutes per week) far outstripped tablet video (158 minutes) and smartphone video (116 minutes) in weekly time spent; and

More than half (53.8%) of 18-34-year-olds used TV-connected devices during the average week in Q4 2016, with users averaging more than 11-and-a-half hours a week with these devices.

What Happens When Millennials Move Through Life Stages? (Not Updated)

An argument can be made that youths’ media habits will change as they grow older and progress through life changes such as starting a family and owning a home. Twin pieces of research released by TDG back in 2013 illustrated this potential phenomenon. The first survey showed that few 18-24-year-olds living with their parents were “highly inclined” to get pay-TV once they struck out on their own, with 1 in 4 saying they were “highly disinclined” to do so. But, in a separate survey of 18-24-year-old broadband users who had moved into a non-college residence, TDG found only about 1 in 10 saying they had never signed up for a cable or satellite service after moving out on their own for the first time.

Nielsen’s Q4 2015 Total Audience Report took a deeper look at the impact of life stages on Millennials’ media habits, segmenting 18-34-year-olds into three distinct groups: “dependent adults” (living in someone else’s home, mostly their parents’); “on their own” (living in their own home without children); and “starting a family” (living in their own home with children).

Nielsen’s data showed that virtually all (97% of) 18-year-olds live in someone else’s home (or presumably in a dorm), while almost 90% of 34-year-olds live in their own home, about 3 in 5 with kids. (If nothing else, this is a solid argument for not treating Millennials as a homogenous group…)

Comparing the technology ownership of these groups yielded some interesting results:

Dependent adults (those living in someone else’s home) are the most likely to have DVRs, DVDs, and PCs, though in each case penetration among those starting a family is higher than those living on their own without children; and

Millennials who are “on their own” have the greatest adoption of multimedia devices and subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), in each case by a fairly sizable degree.

From those results, one could surmise that as Millennials get their own place, at least some drop DVRs and DVDs in favor of multimedia devices and SVOD services, while the opposite trend occurs when they have kids. However, it’s worth remembering that this data measures different segments of 18-34-year-olds, and doesn’t look at the same group as they grow older. It’s entirely possible that the Millennials examined who have kids are composed more of older Millennials who are simply more akin to Gen Xers in their media habits than the younger Millennials who don’t have children.

Nevertheless, a similar pattern emerges when looking at pay-TV penetration (measured as service from an MVPD – wired cable, DBS or telco): use of these services was highest (88%) among dependent adults, falling to the lowest point among those who are on their own (72%), but then higher again among those who are starting a family (79%).

The presence of children seems to have some impact on pay-TV penetration, as across all Millennial age brackets (18-24, 25-29, 30-34) penetration was higher among those living in their own with children than those living in their own home without children. Again, age may be a greater factor than the presence of children, as it’s difficult to separate these disparate factors.

Slightly more than 2-and-a-half-hours per day for “dependent adults” (living in someone else’s home); but

Was almost half-an-hour less among those living on their own without kids (2 hours and 6 minutes per day); while

Soaring to roughly 3-and-a-quarter-hours per day among those living in their own home with children.

Meanwhile, time spent with TV-connected devices was highest among those living on their own without kids (1 hour and 32 minutes per day), and lowest among those living in someone else’s home (1 hour and 11 minutes per day). And in examining the TV versus TV-connected device mix, 53% of Millennials “on their own” use such a device on any given day that they use a TV set, compared to only about 4 in 10 from the other groups.

Overall, the “starting a family” group most closely resembles the “dependent adults” segment in its viewing. This suggests (but certainly doesn’t confirm) that as Millennials have kids, they fall into similar patterns as they had when they were living with their parents.

What About Race/Ethnicity and Income? (Race/Ethnicity Data Updated)

When sorting by race/ethnicity, consumption data in the most recent Nielsen reports reveal that:

African-Americans continued to consume the most traditional TV among races and ethnicities on a weekly basis in Q1, more than triple the amount of time spent by Asian viewers, who spent the least amount of time watching TV (43:23 vs. 14:26);

Among Black American adult users of each medium, time spent with traditional TV was down by almost 12 hours per month from Q1 2016, while AM/FM radio was relatively flat, and time spent with smartphone web and apps up sharply; and

Similar patterns were observed with Hispanic and Asian-American adult users of each medium.

The Total Audience Report for Q3 2015 analyzed media consumption and device ownership patterns by household income, with some interesting conclusions highlighted below.

As one might expect, device adoption is greater among higher-income ($75k+) households than among lower-income households (<$25k), with this true for all devices measured:

DVD/Blu-Ray player (85% for the higher-income households versus 67% for the lowest-income households);

DVR (65% vs. 29%);

Enabled Smart TV (29% vs. 9%);

HD TV (98% vs. 83%);

Multimedia device (34% vs. 12%);

PC with internet (95% vs. 51%);

Any smartphone (92% vs. 64%);

Subscription video-on-demand (66% vs. 27%); and

Any tablet (74% vs. 34%).

As those results demonstrate, the penetration gaps are larger among newer technologies and services.

What’s more interesting, however, is what the examination of consumption among users found: in each case, lower-income media users spent more time with the specific medium than higher-income users. This again was true for all media measured:

Overall, TV accounts for a larger share of total media time for the lowest-income households than the highest, with this attributed to lower-income adults watching TV more throughout the day. When looking at time-of-day activity (not specific to users of each medium):

TV usage is highest among lower-income adults across the entire day, with the delta largest during the daytime and overnight;

Radio listening has the smallest difference between high- and low-income adults throughout the day;

TV-connected device usage is actually highest among the mid- and high-income adults during prime-time, but lower-income adults have the highest use outside of prime-time;

The lowest-income adults have the greatest usage of digital devices in the evening hours but the least usage until 5PM.

Meanwhile, looking at device adoption among households with income of at least $50k, the study finds that:

DVD/Blu-Ray Player and DVR penetration are higher among Blacks and Hispanics than among Asian-Americans;

The MarketingCharts report on media audience demographics – which not only sizes the audience by demographic but also shows the breakdown of audiences in a way not portrayed by Nielsen (e.g. 29.4% of the monthly online TV program viewing audience is aged 25-34) – is available for purchase here.